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Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Bush To Poor Kids: Die Like Rats

You’d think with all of the Republican hoopla about saving the pre-born, they’d also give a shit about the already-been-born. But judging from the EPA’s rollback of rat poison regulations, once the kids have successfully navigated the birth canal, Republican politicos and their patrons in the pesticide industry are only too happy to let them get sick and die. Better that than risk harming their business by letting people think that rat poison might actually be, well, poison.

In the late 90’s the EPA was working on a series of regulations to control pesticides used to kill rats—rodenticides. People—some adults but mostly kids, all of them poor—had been injesting rat poisons accidentally. A number had died. Clinton’s EPA thought that the most powerful poisons should be regulated, reserved strictly for industrial use; at the time they could be bought over the counter by anyone and used at home and nothing on the label suggested just how dangerous they were.
Then in 2000 the Supreme Court appointed Bush instead of allowing the recount in Florida that would have meant a Gore victory, and suddenly things changed. The EPA backed off the idea of regulation in the face of industry objections, and the rate of reported cases of rodenticide poisoning shot up to 60,000 by 2003, most of them kids, and most from poor families.